Samsung Electronics announced its financial result for the second quarter of 2018 at KRW 58.48 trillion (US$ 52.05 billion) with a decrease of 4% YoY. The operating profit was KRW 14.87 trillion (US$ 13.23 billion), up by 6% YoY.

Cities worldwide are preparing themselves to enter the new age of IoT (Internet of Thing) through the installation of smart streetlights and the capital of Taiwan, Taipei is no exception. Taipei city has been working with Everlight, the Taiwanese LED package giant and LED lighting producer, to replace the conventional streetlights with LED smart streetlights and to integrate with different solution providers for constructing a smart city for the future. 

Everlight, the leading Taiwanese LED package company commented on the tariff policy of the U.S. government and considered that there might be impacts on the prices of LED components and LED lighting products.

The U.S. Federal Circuit has reversed a court’s ruling in a patent infringement dispute between Boston University and Epistar, Everlight and Lite-On.

The German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron has reported its financial results for the second quarter and the first half of 2018 and revealed that its MOCVD systems for laser and red-orange-yellow (ROY) LED applications have created significant contributions to the sales growth. 

Seoul Semiconductor has announced its revenue for the second quarter of 2018 to be KRW 290 billion (US$ 259.84 million), which meets the company’s target of KRW 280 to 300 billion. 

Taiwanese semiconductor equipment supplier Gallant Precision Machining (GPM) reported that the company has prepared for equipment to produce Micro LED, including facilities of LED picking, washing, mass transferring and testing. The facilities are now at the experimental phase.

The Taiwanese backlight module and projector producer Coretronic held the earnings conference call of Q2 on July 24th and claimed that the company’s business has not been influenced by the tariff imposed by the U.S. government.

Taiwanese panel producer AUO has reported its revenue for the second season of 2018 and revealed that the company expects to release Mini LED displays for gaming monitors or gaming notebooks in the second half of 2018.

According to the research of LEDinside, the market scale of LED plant lighting is estimated to grow to US$ 633 million by 2022, with a CAGR of 30% during 2018-2022. Many LED producers have entered the market of horticulture lighting to share the expanding opportunities when the demands in the general lighting market are relatively weak. LEDinside has collected the updates of horticultural applications from LED firms of the world. 

The leading Japanese LED producer, Nichia Corporation released the news that the company decided to expand LED production capacity by building a new plant in response to the increasing demands of lighting and backlight LEDs as well as the applications for automotive use and others.

The tariff imposed on Chinese imported products to the U.S. was effective since July 6th. Previously the U.S. government has announced that the U.S. will enforce 25 percent tariffs on 818 Chinese goods which are in total worth about US$34 billion. And on July 10th, the Trump administration proposed additional tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The price competition of blue LED continues and has impacted the revenue of the Taiwanese LED chip maker, Epistar. Facing the challenges, the company plans to expand the production of four-element LED and to increase the proportion of Mini LED products in blue LED.

Taiwanese LED driver IC provider Macroblock has become a supplier of Samsung’s display products and might benefit from Samsung’s mass production of Micro LED displays.

Nokia has announced its commercial partnership with Current by GE for applying smart city technology to Canadian cities to improve infrastructures and citizen services.

A project named UnMast City was initiated by NGOs and supported by professionals in National Health Service in England to fight against the air pollution in London. The project highlights the toxic air crisis by designing a customized LED light mask which changes color to indicate the air quality. 

Cree has reported the assignment of the company’s new CFO, Neill Reynold. The appointment will be effective on August 27th 2018. Reynolds will succeed Mike McDevitt at that time, per the transition plan announced in June.

After Apple introduced 3D sensing technology in iPhone X last year, the technology has caught the eye of the market as well as its key component, VCSEL. The suppliers have been boosting the manufacturing of VCSEL since then but as the sale of iPhone X did not meet expectations, the in-stock 3D sensing component also influenced the revenue of suppliers. 

General Electric (GE) announced its plan to restructure the company in November 2017 with the intention to cut off its lighting business and to narrow the focus on three sectors, aviation, power and renewable businesses. 

Cochlear implant is a device using electrodes to stimulate the auditory nerve to help hearing-impaired people to “hear.” But it cannot deliver complex sound as the electrode current does not move from the electrode to an auditory neuron directly. Researchers have been exploring the possibilities to replace electricity with light in cochlear implants via optogenetics technology.

After showcasing “The Wall” for the first time at CES 2018 in January, Samsung did not stop moving forward with its progress of Micro LED display. The South Korean display giant announced during a press conference that it is ready to mass produce The Wall display for both commercial and home entertainment use.

Samsung revealed the cinema LED “Onyx” last year in Seoul and the product has been expanded into the international market including the U.S., China, Mexico Thailand and other countries. 

On July 18th, the second working meeting for establishing LED filament standards was successfully held at the head office of Shanghai Wellmax Lighting (WELLMAX)- a top lighting company and the key member of the CSA. Organized by China Solid State Lighting Alliance (CSA), the meeting gathered experts and engineers from reputable companies such as Osram, MLS and Bore to further discuss the standard for LED filament. 

LEDinside hosted Micro LEDforum 2018 last week in Taipei, Taiwan and welcomed international speakers and attendees to join the pioneer event of the industry. Several leading institutes shared their innovative approaches of Micro LED and the technology of mass transfer is definitely the biggest focus. QMAT and Tesoro Scientific, two U.S. based start-up companies, introduced innovative materials and equipment concepts to enable ultra-fast mass transfer methods.

LiDAR sensor (LiDAR – Light Detection And Ranging) detects surrounding objects and captures their distance to the sensor by emitting a very short light pulse and measuring the time that the light travels from the sensor to the object and back. LiDAR is a key technology for several applications including autonomous vehicles, intelligent transportation system, drone, measurement, sweeping robot and others. According to the 2018 Infrared Sensing Application Market Report by LEDinside, LiDAR laser market value is expected to reach USD 154 million in 2020.

A research center of Korea Aerospace University and an audio technology company, Sonictier initiated a joint project to develop a 25 square meter LED display module that is capable of passing sound through its holes.

Micro LED display has been considered as the next-generation display technology with its features of high resolution, high contrast, high brightness and wide viewing angles. To achieve these characteristics, driver IC is a key component during the manufacturing process. At Micro LEDforum 2018, LEDinside invited Macroblock, the LED driver IC specialist, to talk about how to fully realize the advantages of Mini and Micro LED display from the viewpoint of a driver IC maker.

Besides display and lighting, LED technology applications in medical field have been progressing to create possibilities for curing cancer. Researchers at Waseda University, Japan have developed an implantable device consisting of LED chips and bio-adhesive nanosheet which has successfully shrank the tumors in mice through photodynamic therapy. The result was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering journal on July 16th 2018. 

The U.S. based start-up, eLux with its patent technology of Micro LED transfer process and its business cooperation with the Foxconn Group, has been attracting attentions from the industry. LEDinside invited Paul Schule, the founder and CTO of eLux, to speak at Micro LEDforum 2018 to share the company’s technological progress and insights of the industry. 

SelfArray, a startup based in New York, shared its innovative Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) technology which uses diamagnetic levitation to align LEDs automatically at Micro LEDforum 2018.